Illusion

There is no illusion, and there is no reality. We all assemble a picture of our world by the sweep of our center of attention across our environment. It is real because we have a state of awareness we consider to be recognition. We believe we can recognize things. We believe that we have experienced them before. It’s an interesting belief, but is it error free?

Humanity has a drive to maintain a perceptual equilibrium. The body doesn’t distinguish between perceptual imbalance and physical distress to the point we even call perceptual imbalances diseases. “Mental illness.” We exert a great deal of effort to hold our attention still, to keep it running on track, just scanning over the same sets of attentional objects so we “stay in touch with reality.” We create our perception of our world, its virtues and its flaws, not because these things are fundamentally true of reality, but because our attention triggers on this set of things based on information we are carrying in our being.

“It is our illusions that create the world” Didier Cauwelaert

“We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy” Cyril Connolly (English critic and editor, 1903-1974)